Izuku chased after the bright light with reckless abandon, tumbling more than a few times, but eventually coming to a stop in front of a beautiful glowing orb. The bluish orb bobbed around and he was mesmerized by it, the drop of light in the endless abyss of darkness.

He'd been living in such constant agony lately that it took him a few moments to realize that something was biting his arm. There was a fish about two feet long attached to the orb, and now it was also attached to him with its teeth. He didn't want to hurt the fishy since he hadn't seen anything living for a while. He really wished the fishy would stop biting him.

(This fish is the Kroyer's Deep Sea AnglerFish)

"I wouldn't have to bite you if you weren't being an idiot."

Izuku looked around in confusion. "Kachan? Is that you? It sounds like you?"

"No shit it's me. Ask me one more dumb question and I'll bite you a second time."

Izuku turned and looked at the fish that was chewing on a piece of his arm that it had bitten off. "Kachan, did you turn into a fish?"

"Obviously. It was becoming clear you'd never find a way out on your own, so here I am. Since apparently I have to pick up the slack when you decide to be useless."

"Don't be mean, Kachan! I've been trying!"

He felt teeth sink into him once more. "Ow! Why'd you bite me again?"

"Because you're whining when you should be thinking. What have you tried so far? Have you tried to jump straight up to the surface?"

"Of course I have! But the change in pressure makes me pass out really fast and I just end up back on the bottom in a different spot."

"What about your million extra quirks, surely one of them is useful, or is everything about you useless?"

"Um, I tried Float, but it only works on air since it's more like air walking than changing your density. Danger Sense and Smokescreen wouldn't really do much here. Fa Jin and Black Whip could maybe help with moving faster, but the faster I go the more likely I am to accidentally go in a circle."

"That's what happens when you give the strongest quirk to an idiot I suppose. I guess just keep crawling around then. I'll stick around though in case you forget how to think."

Izuku nodded and started to move forward when he heard Kachan cough. "You're going the wrong way. You turned left to chase after me, so you need to turn right in order to keep going the same direction. Damn, maybe you would have gotten out by now if you weren't an idiot."

Izuku huffed in disagreement and started moving once more, doing his best to keep moving in a straight and consistent line. Hopefully it wouldn't take that long to get out since he tried to go in any direction that felt like it went even slightly upwards.

"Kachan, are you going to keep biting me?"

"I don't know, are you going to keep being stupid?"

"You're such a meanie, but I guess you're alright as company. And the biting isn't too bad compared to my eyes and ears exploding."

"Oi! It's obviously an implosion, not an explosion. You can't even tell the difference when it's your body getting wrecked? I guess once a Deku, always a Deku."

They kept on moving and talking until exhaustion set in to the point that he couldn't move. He was pretty sure Kachan had been with him for a couple weeks or so at this point (it had been two days).

He tried to think of a way to make the pain stop long enough to sleep and eventually came up with a great idea. He grabbed a sharp rock nearby and slammed it into the base of his skull as hard as he could to shatter his spine, cutting off all sense of touch or pain. He fell asleep almost immediately, on the plus side he'd figured out that the more nuanced parts of the body take more time to heal, which meant he might get a good few minutes of sleep before the pain started up again.

The moment he woke up to the sharp sensation of his ears rupturing he grabbed the rock and crushed his spine again to go back to sleep. He repeated this process about a dozen times until he felt fairly rested and was ready to start moving again.

He looked around and saw that Kachan was still there, that was good. "Dumbass, you can't get rid of me that easily."

Izuku was about to start moving when he felt a different pain than usual on his shoulder, it felt kind of melty to be honest. He looked back and saw a starfish stuck to him. That was weird, he didn't remember a starfish being there before. It had long and thin arms that branched out all over and wrapped around his body, particularly his left shoulder.

(in case you are curious, this is based very much on the basket star species of starfish)

"Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, but I needed to get your attention honey."

"Ochako? Is that you? Or are you just another hallucination?"

"Yeah, it's really me. I told you I'd be here for you no matter what Izuku, and here I am. I love you too much to leave you alone down here."

"I love you too Ochako, But you look more like a starfish than normal."

Kachan laughed. "No shit she does, we wouldn't be able to breathe if we came down here in human forms, dumbass."

That made sense, he supposed. And he was lonely enough that he had no intentions to argue with his girlfriend and best friend. He kept moving forward and did his best to make sure not to let anything bump into his girlfriend as she clung to his arm. Ochako always was a cuddler.


A month passed with little change as Izuku continued to wander aimlessly through the trench.

"It's just so hard you know, I feel like society just threw me away like something disposable. All I have left is you two. Everyone else just forgot about me! And after everything I did for them!"

Izuku 'said' as he crawled his way up a slight incline and had a very real conversation with Kacchan and Uraraka. He'd had their company for a while now, and they made it a lot easier to keep going. He felt Ochako move a little on his back, he was pretty sure that was her nodding.

"Hell yeah! They shouldn't treat you like that! I think you're fantastic and we would never forget about you."

"Oi! I don't know if I'd call the nerd fantastic, but I agree that those extras have been real shitty. You gave your everything to protect Japan, and how do they repay you?! I say you give them a piece of your mind when you get back!"

Izuku just kept on moving and focused on their voices as a good distraction from his chest collapsing again.

"I know it's not your typical way of doing things, but Bakugou might be onto something. If they refuse to help you in your time of need then maybe you shouldn't be helping them so much. They don't deserve your kindness if they'd just leave you down here."

"I don't know… That sounds kinda villainous…"

"Think of it like this, Honey. It's a hero's job to stop villains, and it's pretty villainous for all of them to have just forgotten about you and left you to die after you risked your life so many times protecting them."

"I guess when you say it like that it makes sense."

Kachan yelled loudly. "Hell yeah it does! Let's go kick everyone's asses!"

"But I think there are plenty of people who care about me. The people who actually know me, places like UA."

"Ugh! No they don't! The only thing they cared about was you being useful to them! How did people treat you when you were quirkless and couldn't fight?"

"You know it was awful."

"Uh huh, and how were you treated when you were still figuring out how to use your quirk? Aizawa threatened to expel you for not being useful enough on day one, everyone looked down on you for being the glass cannon that would only break himself. Hell, even All Might treated you like shit before he thought you'd be useful as a successor."

"What's your point?! Why are you throwing this in my face?!"

"Because just like they were laughing at you before for struggling, they're doing it now. You were laughed at for being quirkless, for not having control, for being emotional and crying all the time, the only time you were ever treated kindly was when you were the best in the world at fighting villains. And now that the villains are gone and you need help, they're laughing all over again at you being weak and trapped in this fucking trench!"

A long and nastly looking eel thing came shooting through the water towards Kachan, but Izuku was faster and grabbed the creature before it could hurt his friend. He ripped the weird eel in half and screamed in rage through the water.

"Yeah! That's the kind of anger and aggression you should be channeling!"

He grabbed a rock and hurled it through the water hard enough that he heard the cascading boom as it utterly shattered whatever rock formation it hit in the distance.

"Yes! Get mad! They hurt you, rejected you, so you should go up there and rip them all to pieces!"

He started throwing boulder after boulder. He didn't have a target, but there was something cathartic about unleashing destruction on something. Black whip responded to his rage and protected Kachan and Ochako while ripping apart everything else with massive tendrils that sliced through stone and sea creatures without care or discretion.


In an office, hundreds of miles away, an intern was looking over the data they were getting. Everything was mind numbingly normal and boring to review except for a massive and unprecedented spike in activity. These numbers barely made any sense. It was like there was an incredibly localized earthquake in the Japan Trench for about an hour or two before it suddenly stopped.

He made sure to send the information to his boss with a note that they should check their equipment for any malfunctions and send a drone to see if there was any sort of explanation to be found. It was probably just a bug in the system, but who knows, maybe something interesting is going on down there.

He scoffed, even if there was they wouldn't actually get a drone down there for at least a few months, if they did at all. First they would do a system check to make sure it wasn't a software glitch. If not then they'd need to send out a team to verify it wasn't just a loose wire or some other hardware problem, and doing any sort of non-emergency repairs in the middle of the ocean took forever to get someone to do. Then they would need to submit a request and explain what they hoped to find. Then finally they would need to wait for the availability of a drone that can actually go down that far.

But hey, if in the very unlikely chance it was something cool then he would be the first person to see the signs of it, and that was neat he supposed.


In case it wasn't clear, Izuku is not able to talk since hit lungs are full of water and relies on gills, so all of these conversations are 100% in his head.

And those sea creatures are just regular ass animals that are sticking by Izuku because he's a delicious meal that isn't fighting back.

hope you're all enjoying Izuku's descent into madness and turning into an eldritch horror.